No Man's Sky

Tools    





there's a frog in my snake oil
Yeah, not looking good. They've knocked out a patch already, will see if that changes anything. Doesn't look like something that would have caught out the master-race types though, and a lot of steam coming from that direction. Fingers crossed it's some fixable oversight re the hitching, which seems to be the main issue.

(It hasn't helped that the options menu seems to have some legacy daftness from PS4, whereby you have to hold the mouse button down to effect changes. Loads of guys falling foul of that )

I thought that on the DL, but people pointed out that's compressed DL vs disc. Will see how big it is on install. The 4K pix from Nvidia suggest entirely different models / added meshes etc for cruisers, so seems there are additions.
__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here



The People's Republic of Clogher
Finish Abzu while you're waiting.

It's a lovely little thing.
__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan



there's a frog in my snake oil
If I could play it at work I would (On a late shift )

But nah, I shall get home, assemble some space beer, and tackle the demon glitches. I'm a 30fps peasant at heart, reckon I'll be fine



The People's Republic of Clogher
Are people able to brute force their way through?

I've got a mate who's downloading it right now and hoping to run it on a 750ti. Min specs are a 480, I think, which is ancient, although min specs really are no indication - They basically mean that the game will run with that hardware, not that it'll run at playable framerates.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Seems they can brute force everything but the hitching, which has some mystery cause. Still trying to nail down exactly what the prob is. Lots reporting the borderless-windowed is fixing it, but a few saying it's then reverted.



The People's Republic of Clogher
The framerate's not great on console either. I've learned to live with 30 for anything complex on PS4 (but stuff like Dark Souls 2 and the Naughty Dog remasters running at 60 really stand out as what they should be shooting for) but NMS frequently dips into the 20s.



there's a frog in my snake oil
The more I read, the more I'm thinking I should be hitting 60fps with high/ultra settings mix with i5/GTX 970, so long as I can solve the hitching. Ain't too worried as yet. Think some of this is storm in a teacup.

*EDIT*

Key issues appear to be:
- Hitching (solved by windowed-borderless)
- Can't tab back after tabbing out (solved by windowed-borderless)
- Low FPS (various: setting FPS cap higher than desired, playing in offline mode)
- Can't even boot it (solved by latest patch)



The People's Republic of Clogher
With hindsight, of course - A 15 man team trying to test different PC configs on a huge voxel based game? A sh*tshow was always a possibility.

The Steam Machine format is a fantastic idea in theory, if only to drive home a set number of different performance configs for devs to get a title running on.

EDIT - Been reading a Giant Bomb thread on the problems and even 980ti/1080 owners are finding parts unplayable. It's so bad that you'd think there is bound to be an easy binary solution to this.

I really doubt that they knew this all along (and were banking on the majority of people having adequate performance) but this is awful PR for a small company.

I wonder how many refunds have been made? I never bothered with Arkham Knight because I could brute force a steady 30 from it at the time.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Yeah I suspect incompetence over connivance.

Watching some streamers who aren't having issues, but all are mentioning having had to move to windowless etc. Hopefully it is just that simple for most cases.

Plus side = all the menu gubbins seems to be working. Sounds pop-in is still present, but pushing the draw distance back pushes the pop-in off into less noticeable realms.



The People's Republic of Clogher
I've got one mate on my Steam list who has been playing it but there's no reply (he's not in game now) when I asked how it's running.

He's either watching da Limpics or is off in a huff - I think he had even more hype for it than you did!



there's a frog in my snake oil
I am at peak mindless hype! This will be me tonight, this will be meeee!




The People's Republic of Clogher
The guy I was talking about in the post above - Someone came into his work yesterday and said he'd just bought a PS4 to play No Man's Sky.

That's moving from the realms of mindless hype and into sheer stupidity! :S



there's a frog in my snake oil
Ok, yes, this is definitely an indie game on stilts. I'm liking, but you've gotta be prepared for wobble.

My story so far is:

I've felt like I was in a living Star Trek location.



Killed an alien butterfly for science



Found my way back out of a bastard cave system.



Found my ship again



Made it into space



And got jetpack-glitched into this shack wall



---

Essentially, it seems far less than the sum of its hype. And I wouldn't rush to get it. But on balance, I like the first five hours



there's a frog in my snake oil
Yeah, can see how the thinner bits and glitches are really gonna draw back that curtain.

I've got the mysterious hitches, but by turning v-sync off and setting fps target to 90 it's rarely noticeable as always above 60, my screen's refresh rate. So yeah, actually pretty playable, if clearly a bit broken.



The People's Republic of Clogher
If you lock your framerate at 59 you should stop the tearing on a 60hz monitor. It won't be as smooth as vsync but hey.

Have you tried forcing vsync (plus triple buffering) on in Nvidia Inspector?



“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”


And got jetpack-glitched into this shack wall



---





there's a frog in my snake oil
Haven't tried anything fancier than setting Gsync to false in the files. It's chugging along fine, but hoping for a patch.

It'd take too long to list all the little things that are sub-stellar about the game, but I'm glad they've nailed their main promise. Ludicrouly gaudy space-scapes





Add in the never knowing what twisted beast is over the hill, and I'm def liking that aspect. Musta got lucky on my home system, because it's chock full of weird things. Still haven't left! (PS I did get out of the wall in the end )



there's a frog in my snake oil
Have a 15hrs+ review

The Great:

They've knocked the Forbidden Planet vibe out of the park. You never know which mutant beast will hove over the next hill, which tumbled vista will next catch your eye. Which alien screech will make you jet-pack into the sky



Just chilling here with my Curly-headed Cows, as they genteely poop gold nuggets in the cyan grass, is one of many magical little moments. It's the alien scenes and surprises that are keeping me playing, for sure.

The Good:

The 'Chose Your Own Adventure' conundrums have a Cthulian capriciousness to them, and show no sign of losing their variety. Deciphering the surrounding alien chatter as you learn the Korvax for 'penitent' and 'tissue' is also fun

The Perfectly Fine:

Mining mountainous shards of minerals, carving impromptu tunnels through the terrain, jet-packing over chasms to do it all again... These little loops are neat and hypnotic in their own way.

The Uninspired:
  • The resource management is flat out tedious. Your main motivation for engaging with it is to make it less tedious. I can't think of a worse motivation.
  • The visual variety rarely affects the gameplay. Toxic threat plays out the same as deadly heat, locations gain no flavour from the local terrain, so many things repeat the same way again and again.
  • The combat, crafting, and space flight all feel pretty simple and thin.
  • All of the above are the bulk of what you'll be doing.

---

TLDR:

60s Futurism Simulator:


Game:
+



there's a frog in my snake oil
In defence of the ludicrous...

Some of the beasties I've seen are stately and dignified. But they're definitely in the minority

And I'm fine with that. The way I see it, procedural generation inevitably throws up absurdities, so in many ways it makes sense to embrace it fully. The result is maximum possible diversity

I have a feeling when Elite Dangerous reaches this stage, they're going to have to opt for a much slimmer set of options to maintain credibility. I'm expecting a lot more repetition (which in itself will be immersion-breaking, but the lesser of two evils).

In the meantime though, I'm fine with this demented zoo of possibilities